


These Intimate Strangers

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Bearded Dwarf Women, Durin Family, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarven Politics, Dwarves, Erebor, F/M, Gen, Pre-Smaug, Young Dwarves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2773100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thrust into his new role as King Under the Mountain after his father falls to a cold drake, Thrór of Erebor rises to greatness - and falls to a tragic end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because we love Thrór, right? We want more Thrór, yes? We want Thrór and Dísa running a kingdom together? Absolutely! The title comes from the Indigo Girls song, "Reunion."

_Coward,_ she thought, watching the caravan pull away, the hooves of their horses and the wheels of their carriages sinking deep in the muddy road.

 _Wait a week._ Thrór insisted - implored, for all the good it did him. _Wait a month! ‘Til the roads are dry at least._

Mudslides weren’t uncommon this time of year. The lad might find himself arse over head at the bottom of a rock pile for all the good it did him. Or set upon by highwaymen. Everyone knew that the youngest prince was bound for the Iron Hills. It wasn’t hard to imagine that his only brother would pay handsomely to have him returned home. He might be kidnapped. Threatened, at least. Disfigured, send a finger back in a box to show they meant business.

 _Coward,_ Dísa thought again, turning from the sight with a sneer. She was positioned on the battlements; guarding, at least that was what she was meant to be doing. In her opinion, the worst-natured of the Mountain’s inhabitants was leaving now and good riddance; there wasn’t a body working off a debt or awaiting trial in the dungeons that ranked lower in her opinion than Grór of Erebor.

She turned her head away; she couldn’t abide cowards.

* * *

 

Thrór had seen his brother off, but he didn’t watch the departing caravans. He’d inquired as to whether or not he had everything he needed - it’d be a wonder if he didn’t, Grór had packed so many trunks that not a trace of him remained in their family’s quarters. Just a big empty room.

“I’ve everything,” his brother replied, shortly, the edges of his patience worn thin. “Thank you.”

Only it wasn’t ‘thank-you.’ It was ‘get out.’ Thrór heard the intention behind the words; he was good at that. One of the only things he was good at.

“Of course,” he replied and then did as his brother asked him and got out.

They departed with a handshake - a _handshake_. There’d been time enough to kiss Frór before...ah, but Grór was a different sort of fellow. He’d always been different. And their flesh did not meet for his brother was wearing gloves. For riding. But Thrór couldn’t help thinking that it was because he didn’t want his remaining brother touching him.

Thrór didn’t understand, but he didn’t blame him. Grór and Frór had been close - in age and in temperament, closer in both than Thrór was to either of them. He was almost out of school when Frór was in his cradle and in the Guard when Grór came along. In other families, that meant the youngest brothers looked up to the eldest as a second father, but Thrór had never been that to them. When they were little he delighted in being their biggest and best playmate, when they were older, it was they who often told him he was being too loud, too boisterous.

“You’re _embarrassing_ me,” Grór liked to hiss when his brother’s affection became too overdone by his standards in front of his friends.

Frór was quieter, more easy-going. He’d bear up against Thrór’s embraces, answer his earnest inquiries about his day, his friends with forbearance. But he and Grór had been infinitely more suited, both of a serious, studious nature. Joining the Guard for Frór had been more about ceremony than anything else. Until he insisted to his father that he be permitted to march south. Until Dáin agreed. Until they realized that they would need all of their warriors-at-arms in the battle against the drake.

Until their family home became a residence of one.

Thrór scrubbed a hand over his face, feeling the curious absence of beard. They’d only just buried them. And already his brother was miles down the road. He stayed just long enough to see them laid in stone. It seemed, without his father or his brother, Grór saw no reason to stay.

And he was not alone. The caravan East had been the biggest by far, the largest journey undertaken in years. Merchants, warriors, scholars, scribes, masters of all descriptions went with his brother to their cousin’s kingdom. Following opportunity. Not willing to give their foolish young King a chance.

Did he deserve one? _Really?_

Thrór was an honest dwarf. It was one of his virtues. Honest, hard-working, cheerful, he wasn’t arrogant (yet another virtue), but he could admit that he wasn’t any of the things his father had been, the things that made him a great kng. Dáin was shrewd, he was patient, he was the wisest dwarf that Thrór had ever known.

Thrór hadn’t even been wise enough to know that he would not be a prince forever.

“Not a bad view from up top.”

Ah. Just what he needed, a balm for horrible thoughts. Thrór turned and gave Dísa a half-smiling shrug. “Well, they’ll be at it for hours; all the Mountain’s gone away.”

“Nah, not all,” she said, spitting on the floor with disgust. “Only the shite ones.”

“Oh, good,” Thrór smiled. “I’d not want to be a king of shite.”

Then he turned away and stifled a sob in his sleeve.


	2. Chapter 2

The battle - if you could call it a battle, five-hundred dwarves against one opponent - raged for hours. The sweat was pouring into Dísa’s eyes, blinding her; she took off her helm to provide some relief. Her father would never have approved, but her father was long gone and, if the tide of the fight turned against them, he’d very soon have his chance to tell her off.

The drake was massive, and when it flew directly overhead, it blotted out the sun. Gold glimmered in its belly, forming a glittering suit and for all their efforts, their warriors had only succeeded in driving its hoard further into its underside. Its tail whipped furiously, barbed spikes knocking their forces to and fro.

She did not know when the King fell. Whether he was victim of the acidic bile that dripped from the creature’s mouth or his armor was crushed by its tail or he was squeezed flat by the claws that dug deep in the earth, ripping trenches beneath their feet, she did not see. She only knew that when it reared back, bellowing a roar that shook the rocks in the mountainside, she saw her chance to fire.

It was a chance she took and it paid off. The thing flailed, crushing still more beneath its bulk, but these were its death throes. Thrór charged forward then, his flank cleaving the creature’s great black head from it’s long neck. Their axes were chipped or melted away when they’d finished, but at last the beast was still, its leathery wings crumpled beneath it, like a tent fallen over in bad weather.

It must have taken an hour or more, but to Dísa it seemed to pass in a wink. No sooner had the victory cries started up than she was clapped on the back once, twice, a hundred times. That was when they began to call for the king. To tell him who it was who had felled the beast.

They found him much later, his body twisted like so many others of their slain. Frór took longer; he was not yet full grown and had always been a slender lad.

Thrór was crowned on the battlefield. As much of a coronation as one could have under blood and slaughter. A juzrâl, who knew the blessings, came forward with oil that was intended for the cooking pots. There was no wine to make the offering, but all the field bowed before him and came forward to kiss his hands.

Dísa was the first. Most bowed low and kept their eyes on the ground, but she looked Thrór right in the face. She knew if he hadn’t been burned by the sun, he would have been white as a sheet. His hands, when she took them in hers, were shaking.

The bodies were wrapped in clean sheets, more than a hundred of them. There was no time to tarry; even dwarven corpses would rot and stink in such a sun. Half the wagons were laden with the dead, the other half with the gold prised out of the dragon’s gut. Her boon and reward for its slaying. The head was dragged along behind; it would be bone and a trophy for Thrór by the time they reached home.

The heads and scales of dragons and other beasts slain in the wilderness were the feature of the half-bestiary, half-museum known as the Game Room. The drake that killed their king had, by far, the largest skull in the place, big as an oliphaunt. When they were younger, Dísa and Thrór used to run through the rooms, climbing the skeletons, rigged together with steel and wire, running their fingers over the white bones of creatures long driven from their lands, measuring their heights against the teeth of leviathans from the depths of the sea, some of which were carved with images of Men with fish tales.

When they were older they took Fundin with them and Dísa had taken him again, watching him stare with wide eyes and an open mouth at the latest addition; he was even more impressed by the skull than he had been by the small mountain of gold that had been her present from the crown for services rendered. She’d already spent a bit of it getting a tattoo designed to commemorate the occasion.

Thrór had not come with them when they went to visit the creature. He hadn’t gone near the Game Room since they’d come home. He went on a small circuit from the throne room, to the council chambers, to the library and, if he did not fall asleep at a desk, to his own family home.

It was...Dísa didn’t want to call it lucky that their king had fallen at the height of summer, but it meant less work for Thrór. Their trade contracts were all settled for the autumn and unless a truly terrible calumny came upon them (may the stone shield them), the army would have the winter months to train and recuperate from those losses they had suffered routing the beast.

All that Thrór had been required to plan was the funeral. It was a grand affair, the solemnities lasted for three days. Those who could abandon their craft did so and the Mountain was as silent as the tomb in which Dáin and Frór rested. Dísa did not know for sure, but she thought Thrór had been spending time there too, when he could get away from his other duties.

“Can I borrow Óin for a bit?” Dísa asked her brother, referring to her not-quite two-year-old nephew.

“Why?” Gróin asked suspiciously. The aforementioned nephew was sitting in his father’s arms, blinking sleepily up at his aunt. Óin could be a bit of a solemn-looking little thing, but Thrór was nearly always able to prompt a smile out of him.

“Thrór’s been down for weeks, I want to cheer him up,” she explained, holding out her hands expectantly.

Gróin rolled his eyes and did not relinquish his son. “I might’ve known, you’ve no use for children unless it’s as a tool.”

“Well, you won’t let me use him for target practice,” Dísa rolled her eyes; she didn’t really mean it and anyway, the babe would make a rotten target. His curly red hair was easy enough to spot, but his ability to sit up on his own had not been honed to perfection yet and he still had a tendency to fall over. “Come along, consider it your duty to your liege.”

Fixing his sister with an unimpressed expression, Gróin pursed his lips and scowled. “Don’t abuse the privilege - why can’t you use Fundin to the same effect?”

“Fundin’s in school,” she reminded him. “And he’s not as squashy - the fatter they are, the more Thrór likes ‘em.”

“Are we talking about my son or a prize pheasant?” Gróin asked rhetorically, but he relented and handed the baby over. Óin didn’t seem much bothered either way and bore the transition with nary a smile nor a frown. “Go on then, but tell Thrór to bring him back when he’s done. And - Dísa?”

She was half-turned to take her leave, but she cocked an ear and waited, with an air of great impatience.

“He’s had a few rough blows,” Gróin reminded her - as if she needed reminding, but then he always thought she was thick as granite. “Don’t expect he’ll buck up all at once. It takes time, you know.”

“‘Course I do,” she replied, with a bit of a snap in her voice. “But it doesn’t hurt hurrying it along, eh?”

“You can’t hurry grief!” Gróin called after her. She’d heard him, she had to have heard him, but she ignored him and jogged off.

“Not too fast!” he added, uselessly; no doubt she’d ignore that too.

* * *

 

Not for the first time, Thrór wished he’d paid better attention at school. Never a great scholar, he had made little effort to improve his performance through due diligence. School, for him, was a time of seeing friends, of waiting until their class recessed, then waiting until the day was over so that he could embark on more frivolous pursuits. Reading, writing, and sums happened around all that.

It was the _law_ that confounded him. There were so many rules and regulations and precedents and divine ordinances thrown in there that he could not make heads or tails of it. And that was just _dwarven_ law. The laws of Men? Incomprehensible for they changed every two or three-hundred years and were amended thrice as often. Laws and by-laws and codes of conduct stretched back so that just when he thought he’d made headway, some conflict or other would change what had been into some new form and he was right back where he’d started.

Head throbbing, Thrór groaned aloud in his quiet corner of the library, fisting his hands in his hair. He’d only cut his beard in mourning, but that seemed a premature gesture; at the rate he was going, he’d pluck every last strand out of his head.

Someone poked him in the back of the head and he looked up, an apology already forming. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been told off for being too noisy in his frustration. But his chagrin turned to delight when he saw the baby that was being held before him.

“Oh! What a nice surprise!” Thrór exclaimed. He looked up, expecting Gróin and his cheer trebled when he saw Dísa. “A _very_ nice surprise.”

She dumped the infant into his arms and Óin busied himself grasping a lock of hair that was hanging over Thrór’s shoulder. Said lock immediately went into his mouth where it was sucked upon contentedly. Thrór held the child to his shoulder and patted his back fondly.

“Reckoned you could use a distraction,” Dísa said, sitting down on top of the table, which was likely more comfortable for her given she had legs as long and thick as tree trunks. “And I’m not supposed to bring food.”

“Food,” Thrór replied wistfully. “I remember that.”

Rolling her eyes, Dísa kicked him in the leg, “There’s no laws as say a king can’t eat, are there?”

“Nah,” Thrór replied, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. Óin was wiggling, so Thrór sat him upon his lap, pushing his work out of the way so that the babe’s wandering hands did not do a harm to any of the library’s things. “If there was, I’ve probably forgotten it - I’m hopeless, you know.”

 _“I’m_ hopeless,” Dísa corrected him. “You’re just…”

“Dim?” Thrór supplied. “Undisciplined, I think, Master Ola said.”

“She was a one-dwarf gristmill,” she rolled her eyes. “Always churning away. You had better things to do.”

“Aye,” Thrór sighed heavily, looking at the papers splayed before him. “More fool me.”

Dísa looked at him, hard, the way she stared down the shaft of an arrow before letting it fly. They always hit their mark. She was so extraordinary that he wondered whether or not she was disappointed with him.

“You get melancholy when you’re hungry,” she said at last, seizing him by the arm and hauling him out of the chair. “Ey!”

Her shout rang across the library and landed in the ears of a dark-haired, squint-eyed youngling whose eyebrows furrowed in what might have been rage or confusion at being so addressed. “What?”

“If we leave, are you going to haul this lot off or can it stay where it is?” she asked, ignoring his rather impolite address and somewhat nasty tone - rage, then.

“When are you coming back?” he asked, drawing closer to them. Thrór realized that he was not as young as he looked. He’d mistaken him for a five-year apprentice, but he was full-bearded and had to be in his sixties, at least. “Sometime in the next fortnight?”

“Just grabbing a bite from the dining hall,” Thrór said. “We wouldn’t want to leave a crumb trail all around, would we?”

“No,” the lad said shortly. “You would not. Very well, as you’ve a modicum of thoughtfulness between you, I’ll leave it all be for now. _That_ won’t be coming back with you, I trust?”

He gave Óin a look that implied he was not very fond of babies; Óin returned it with a look that suggested he was not very fond of apprentices.

“He won’t,” Thrór assured him, lifting Óin higher in his arms and kissing him. His beard tickled the baby’s neck and he smiled at long last. Thrór smiled as well, but the apprentice did not smile. His fingers twitched at his side and he seemed to be holding himself back from shooing them out the door.

He didn’t need to exert himself, Thrór and Dísa left at once, the latter snorting to herself on the way out the door. “All of four feet tall and he carries himself like he’s over five - I like him.”

“You would,” Thrór agreed. “As you’re over five and carry yourself like you’re seven. Me, I’m short and content to be so.”

“You’re not so short,” Dísa said, throwing an arm round his shoulders. “Perfect height for leaning on.”

“Thanks,” Thrór grinned at her. “Good to know I’m useful for something round here.” He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the smells from the dining hall made his mouth water and stomach grumble. Good old Dísa, she never missed a meal. Neither did he, until recently. Just before they entered the hall he put his arm around her waist in a quick squeeze, “Thanks, you’re a gem.”

“I know,” she said loftily, smiling at him, lightning-quick. “Is Óin still too little for steak?”

“He hasn’t got any teeth.”

“That’s a ‘could be,’ then?”


End file.
